Don’t freak out if the Detroit Lions don’t re-sign anyone before Monday

Why haven’t the Detroit Lions re-signed Jamaal Williams yet? What the heck are they waiting for on John Cominsky? Are the Lions low-balling all of their free agents????

It’s the Friday before free agency week, and I can already sense the blood pressure of Lions fans rising as the team has been eerily quiet this entire week. Their lone announcement was a random re-signing of reserve offensive lineman Ross Pierschbacher.

But I’m here to tell you all to relax. I know we’re excited to bring back some of our favorite Lions players, but nothing about this week has been out of the ordinary. As former Packers front office member Andrew Brandt likes to say, “Deadlines spur action,” and Detroit still has until Monday before any of these players can even negotiate with another team and an additional two days until they can sign with another team.

All you need to do is look to last year to see that the Lions are just following their own timeline. On the Friday before the opening of 2022 free agency, the Lions had only re-signed three players: Josh Reynolds, Rashod Berry, and Ryan McCollum.

Unsurprisingly, the action started coming in on Sunday—the day before free agency tampering began.

Deadlines spurring action.

That Sunday, the Lions re-signed Alex Anzalone, Jalen Elliott, Shaun Dion Hamilton, and C.J. Moore. The next day, Detroit’s big re-signing of Tracy Walker happened, with Evan Brown, and Tim Boyle signing later in the day.

So when John Cominsky says he’s going to test the market for a few days, that’s completely normal. See what’s out there, and there’s a more than reasonable chance that he still returns. A great example is Kalif Raymond and Charles Harris, who both agreed to terms on the second day of tampering and officially signed on later in the week. They waited to see the market, and then returned to Detroit. It’s a smart way to see your own value and negotiate.

And the Lions are far from the only team doing this. Just look at this week of NFL transactions. Since Monday:

• The Giants re-signed Daniel Jones
• The Falcons re-signed Lorenzo Carter
• The Texans re-signed Scott Quessenberry
• The Giants re-signed Jarrad Davis
• The Lions re-signed Ross Pierschbacher
• The 49ers re-signed Colton McKivitz
• The Patriots re-signed James Ferentz
• The Raiders re-signed Ameer Abdullah
• The Bengals re-signed Joe Bachie and Jalen Davis

Just a handful of moves have happened and essentially no big names have come off the board yet. This is standard operating procedure these days, yet we forget about it every year.

I get it. We’re all excited to see our fellas come back to the team. And while there’s no guarantee all the guys we want to be back will come back, we won’t really know still for the next couple days. Until then, enjoy the calm before the storm.